We were talking about it last night. There’s a pervasive virus that sweeps across Christian campuses, and I think it’s tied in greatly with the Gen-Y mindset along with this overt dedication to being principled. I’ve explained it once, and here it is again:

…I want a girl who loves silly, offbeat humor, that’d really think it was cute if I did whacked-out romantic stuff. Like write an LFO song dedicated to her (telephone poles, Dinty Moore beef stew / I’m glad I found a girl like you). I want a happy love. I think about it, and the loves I’ve had have been things like superficial, overly deep and probing, and just plain depressing. Not really fun, not really enjoyable. It’s always felt like work to make a relationship. And for the longest time I guess… well, I don’t know what I thought, but I’m tired of what I did think. I’m tired of not being off the cuff, jumping around, just BEING FUN. You don’t get too much of that at Grove City, in my experience. You ask a girl out, and either she’s freaked out because she thinks you want to get married, or thinks you want to get married and is all over that, when hey, you just wanted coffee and a smile or two. And I’m almost sure there’s guys like that too. Either way, it sucks that a guy and a girl can’t get together to enjoy themselves without finding a free weekend to get married in the chapel.

Almost 2 years it’s the same thing. You can’t take a girl out for coffee without having a game plan for years. You can’t just be sweet and kind without having to drop back and punt things you’re uncomfortable with. If I want to make you dinner, I do it because I’m having fun. I want five dates to figure out the next five dates, not to marry you. The time will come for the purpose and for the seriousness, but relax and enjoy life for even the smallest moment without extra pretense.

I’m just frustrated by it. All of my relationships on this campus sans one ended on that note – that there was an inability to commit to something that had no need to be committed to yet.

We’ll see what happens in the next semester, but as for me, I’m going to just throw it all up into the air and let God just direct the path – as seriously or not as He wants.

Life is funny. You get twisted and bent and created and recreated and destroyed promptly afterwards. You learn and forget, relearn and remember to forget again. You fight God so that he’ll give you his job when you don’t really want it, but you keep telling yourself you’re bigger and better and faster than what He’s doing. And you take it over. Ambling along. And then you realize you only took over what you were given anyway. The best laid plans of mice and men, after all.

Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of captivity. But one hundred years later, we must face the tragic fact that the Negro is still not free.

One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later, the Negro is still languishing in the corners of American society and finds himself an exile in his own land.

So we have come here today to dramatize an appalling condition. In a sense we have come to our nation’s capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir.

This note was a promise that all men would be guaranteed the inalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check which has come back marked “insufficient funds.” But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation.

So we have come to cash this check — a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice. We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time to open the doors of opportunity to all of God’s children. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood.

It would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the moment and to underestimate the determination of the Negro. This sweltering summer of the Negro’s legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality. Nineteen sixty-three is not an end, but a beginning. Those who hope that the Negro needed to blow off steam and will now be content will have a rude awakening if the nation returns to business as usual. There will be neither rest nor tranquility in America until the Negro is granted his citizenship rights.

The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges. But there is something that I must say to my people who stand on the warm threshold which leads into the palace of justice. In the process of gaining our rightful place we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred.

We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. we must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force.

The marvelous new militancy which has engulfed the Negro community must not lead us to distrust of all white people, for many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny and their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom.

We cannot walk alone. And as we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall march ahead. We cannot turn back. There are those who are asking the devotees of civil rights, “When will you be satisfied?” we can never be satisfied as long as our bodies, heavy with the fatigue of travel, cannot gain lodging in the motels of the highways and the hotels of the cities. We cannot be satisfied as long as the Negro’s basic mobility is from a smaller ghetto to a larger one. We can never be satisfied as long as a Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and a Negro in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote. No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.

I am not unmindful that some of you have come here out of great trials and tribulations. Some of you have come fresh from narrow cells. Some of you have come from areas where your quest for freedom left you battered by the storms of persecution and staggered by the winds of police brutality. You have been the veterans of creative suffering. Continue to work with the faith that unearned suffering is redemptive.

Go back to Mississippi, go back to Alabama, go back to Georgia, go back to Louisiana, go back to the slums and ghettos of our northern cities, knowing that somehow this situation can and will be changed. Let us not wallow in the valley of despair. I say to you today, my friends, that in spite of the difficulties and frustrations of the moment, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal.” I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slaveowners will be able to sit down together at a table of brotherhood. I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a desert state, sweltering with the heat of injustice and oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice. I have a dream that my four children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. I have a dream today.

I have a dream that one day the state of Alabama, whose governor’s lips are presently dripping with the words of interposition and nullification, will be transformed into a situation where little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls and walk together as sisters and brothers. I have a dream today. I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together. This is our hope. This is the faith with which I return to the South. With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.

This will be the day when all of God’s children will be able to sing with a new meaning, “My country, ’tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my fathers died, land of the pilgrim’s pride, from every mountainside, let freedom ring.” And if America is to be a great nation, this must become true. So let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire. Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York. Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania! Let freedom ring from the snowcapped Rockies of Colorado! Let freedom ring from the curvaceous peaks of California! But not only that; let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia! Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee! Let freedom ring from every hill and every molehill of Mississippi. From every mountainside, let freedom ring.

When we let freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, “Free at last! free at last! thank God Almighty, we are free at last!”

What do you do when you don’t beleive the Bible as truth?
Why do all guys have this innate desire to fix things, even when we can’t?
Why is it that my life constantly refelcts John Mayer lyrics?
Why do I want so bad to be in control? Why can’t I give that to God?

So I’ve thought all of this, and was looking back at some of my old entries. I found this one I wrote this summer, and it’s the same story in my life – give up. Stop trying and give it to God.

…So here’s the rub: God wants me to give everything over to Him to lighten my burdens, and yet I enjoy having those unneeded burdens because I’m impatient and want what I want when I want and under my own control. And then on top of that, Satan takes advantage of my weaknesses, exploits them and I begin to start to pity myself, get angry at people who don’t deserve it, and just become a major jerk all in the name of what I want.

And that right there bothers me the most – because I’m the one ultimately responsible for this, and yet I do nothing to solve it. No one can make you feel inferior without your consent, and I’ve given people a contract to humiliate. God is teaching me so much right now – learning to give up everything to Him, the knowledge that strength is power under control, the knowledge that God does have that perfect person out there for me but I need to trust in Him who’s perfect first, and that for too long I’ve had my priorities mixed up and am in desperate need of a change there.

So I begin to leave it here right now. My worries and frustrations, I give to God. My weakness is strength and God’s made perfect through it, and it’s His. I’ll give Him my relationships, because He ultimately will be the one to guide and direct them properly. And after the forging by fire is over, I’ll be able to come back to this point and realize what God’s blessed me with and how much stronger I’ve become as a result.

I leave them again. God, take my will away. Take my contol away, and for what it’s worth, take what I am and use it.